Joseph Stiglitz

Joseph Stiglitz - a distinguished American economist, professor of economics at Columbia University. His fame in the circle of economists owes largely to a public forum activity and research on asymmetry of information, for which in 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize (along with George Akerlof and Micheal Spence). He is a supporter of the idea that free, unregulated markets do not always lead to the best economic results, due to information asymmetry. Among economists received the title of neo-keynesian.

Biography

Born in 1943 in Gary (Indiana) the second of three children of an insurance agent and teacher of elementary education. Since 1960, for three years he studied mathematics, physics and economics at Amherst College in New England. Then, in 1964, he enrolled in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he later obtained his PhD. The following years he spent on research at Cambridge University and then at work in Nairobi (1969 -1971).

In 1993, he parted ways with the academic world and started to work in Council of Economic Advisers to President Clinton. Since 1995 has presided over this body. Two years later, in February 1997, he moved to Washington to work in the World Bank, he was appointed its vice president and chief economist. In 2000 he was forced to resign after sharp criticism of the International Monetary Fund and the US Department of State. Since 1999 he is a professor at Columbia University.

In 2002 he published a best-selling book "Globalization and its Discontents" which contains ruthless settlement of institutions in which Stiglitz had worked. He attacks primarily the IMF. He alleges that the hard economic and political programs IMF imposed on Third World countries worsens their situation. He blames the IMF in that it represents primarily the interests of American Finance at the expense of poor countries.